Hi Tim, This was a very helpful explanation. It worked like a charm, and my computer is actually kind enough not to lag anymore. Amazing how draining 36GB of data off the primary HD will help things move along.
Friendly, Chris On Mar 11, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Tim Kilburn wrote: > Hi Chris, > > The easiest way to do this is to simply copy the entire iTunes folder from > your Home Directory to the external drive. > > 1. Go to the Finder. > 2. Press cmd-shift-h to open your Home Directory. > 3. Navigate to the Music folder. > 4. Locate the iTunes folder and press cmd-c to Copy it. > 5. Navigate to your external drive and Paste it onto the drive, preferably > at the root level but it's not necessary. > > This could take a while depending on the size of your iTunes folder. > > 6. After it's done, confirm the sizes of each folder for a rough estimate of > whether it did the job or not. > 7. You can now start iTunes while holding down the Option key. > > This will bring up the Choose iTunes Library dialog for you. If it does not, > you'l need to quit iTunes and try again. > > 8. Once the dialog is up, press cmd-shift-c to bring up what's attached to > your computer. > 9. Locate your external drive, and expand it with VO-back slash. > 10. Select the iTunes folder that you just copied over. > 11. Press the Open or Choose button, I'm not sure which it is at that point. > > That should do it for you. You can check to make sure all is well in > computerland. All your playlists and everything to do with iTunes should be > exactly the same as it was before this action. If everything is OK, then > navigate back to the iTunes folder in your Home Directory, and throw it in > the Trash. Don't forget to empty your Trash after this otherwise it's not > actually going to save you any space. > > One other thing to note with this set up, this iTunes Library can only be > accessed while the external drive is connected to your machine. If you are > using a laptop and you leave the external at home, the items in the iTunes > Library will not be accessible to you at all. You could, in this case, keep > two iTunes Libraries, one with everything and one with a streamlined amount > of things. They will remain independent of each other, that is, if you > delete something in one, it will not delete in the other and similarly if you > add to one, you'll need to add it to the other if you wish it in both. > > Hope this is clear enough. > > Later... > > On 2011-03-10, at 10:57 PM, Chris Snyder wrote: > >> Hi all, >> I have recently realized that my iTunes library is taking up way too much >> space on my primary hard drive. I'd like to move all of the content to my >> portable hard drive and have iTunes access the files from there. Is there an >> easy way to do this without losing all my playlists and such? >> Friendly, >> Chris >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected]. >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >> > > Tim Kilburn > Fort McMurray, AB Canada > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
